I recently joined a book club. Not an assigned reading, sit in a circle and talk about the assigned book chapters book club. It’s nothing like that. This book club which you can look up right here is a silent one. This is how it works:
We arrive, check in, chat and kiki for about 30 minutes.
When the 30 minutes are up, everybody goes to their silent corner and reads whatever they want to.
It could be a book, an e-book, newspaper, loba yini njayami.
We read in silence for an hour.
Then we regroup and discuss what we were individually reading.
And the best part is…you don’t have to share unless you want to.
I am tempted to share that this book club meets on Sundays from midmorning until afternoon.
I am also tempted to highlight that this is the time that people typically go to church.
Thirdly I am tempted to and have successfully resisted the urge to say that in a way, silent book club has become my church.
Again mind that I resisted the temptation. But I would be wrong not to draw the parallel. Sure, we go to church to praise and worship and pray and tithe,(you can do that anywhere) but the main reason anyone goes to church is for fellowship.
People go to church for the human contact, to be surrounded by people with a shared interest and faith.
I didn’t know it at the time but by simply walking into that book club, I walked into a third space. Now, a third space is a space outside the home and outside either work or school. It’s a community that you join for no reason other than the fact that you want to be there. For most people, church is the easiest third space; most of us are born into it and the community there almost happens organically.
Those of us who are not lucky enough to fall into default third spaces then find ourselves in book clubs, running clubs, social sports clubs nton nton. I am glad to have found a space, perhaps for the first time in my life and that may evolve into a book review section of this blog someday, we’ll see.
Oh and here’s a glimpse of of my book club experience:
